Search This Blog

Spartacus Board Game Review

Spartacus: A Game of Blood & Treachery

I bought this game purely based on two things; liking the show and some vague positive comments I read online. After playing our first game last night I wanted to write out a review for anyone else who might be interested in it.

I should start by saying that my gaming resume consists of the classics and popular stuff like Axis and Allies, Twilight Imperium, Settlers of Catan and Power Grid. Spartacus fits in among those and will be a regular for gaming nights from now on.

The game will not be an easy one like Settlers of Catan that I can bring out with older family, non gamers and most girlfriends but it's nowhere near as 'gamy' as something like Axis and Allies.

My friends and I loved it though. The game breaks down into 4 main phases, a healing and income/upkeep phase, then scheming, then market and finally combat. The scheming allows you to do underhanded or helpful things and usually with the help of other people. Being all alone seems very hard to win with but making a deal with someone and helping each other out will quickly help the two of you rise to victory (well one of you will have to break the allegiance at some point).

The market phase is all done by secret bid and you only get one chance. Put your bid in your fist and everyone reveals at once! Many times I ended up overpaying for something I thought would be a high priced item in fear that I'd lose it to a lower bid.

Then comes combat. One of the best parts of this is that you can gamble on the victor and the degree of victory. We all lost a lot of wealth in an attempt to get rich quick. The combat is also cool. I've read some complaints against it but if you're good with numbers (like any warhammer player ought to be) you should figure it out pretty quick. Gladiator speed for example is by and far the most important stat.

Without explaining everything in super detail I'll tell you that this is a definite good game for so many reasons. It has diplomacy, auctions, combat and gambling; things that many games choose 1 or 2 of as a focus yet Spartacus blends the four making each equally important.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

This model is exceptionally unique in terms of anything I, or likely most people, have ever painted in that she's slightly postpartum. I stuck with the artwork again, in order to contrast her from the white speakers. I also tried out a different painting technique for the skin. Usually I'm pretty lazy and drybrush and wash to get the tones, but on her since she has a lot of flesh, I didn't think it would work well (see the white speaker below for comparison). On this I did some gradual highlights with 2 colours (talarn flesh and elf flesh) and some various mixes in between.

Finished the People of the Stars with their rare loot. Since these are static posed I was pretty limited on how they held the weapons. During the campaign these figures can be used to represent characters with Dragon Vestments. You can see I followed the concept art. I find doing so helps my players identify characters better as well during game play because it matches stories and gear cards in front of them.

This model is awesome. One of the most fun things I've painted in a while due to the different types of textures I put on it. The base from Scibor is also awesome. The faces really fit the Kingdom Death theme. I did order some flowers off ebay to further adorn the base but they were lost in the mail, sadly. The in game encounter for this guy is also awesome and has really good items so I'll probably include him in most campaigns.

With some slightly better lighting and all of the details picked out, I think you can see the armour sheen a bit better. I've put a few angles to show it. When the light is directly on it it's more purple, and turns green/blue at an angle.

I'm going to start a little break from Kingdom Death with a Blood Bowl segment. My wife bought me the Blood Bowl starter for Christmas and I knew I needed an ogre. I instantly ordered an ogre body from ebay without waiting for GW to announce making a new ogre (I'd rather have one I made anyway; it's more special haha).

Anyway to match the box set guys, I needed to take the bald ogre head, carve off his Mongolian-esque moustache and add a helmet with wings. I took those red wings from an Aquila that was mounted to the back of a Space Hulk terminator. The rest is plasticard cut to fit. I toyed with adding more to his grill but it took away from the face. Also he's an ogre; how much protection does he need?

Now that screaming antelope armour got a huge buff, someday we're likely to make it! (though not for a while, we have many expansions to get through and need to get some spidering done).

Since the guy also has a spear which helps with traps, I figured he may need a shield, though maybe not always so I magnetized it. I also greenstuffed his shoulder joints so that he didn't look like a pose-able action figure. You can see on the last photo there's not even a visible magnet!

I really wanted my dung ball for the dung beetle to be unique and the original model was way too smooth. So I greenstuffed the seam between the two halves and then added a bunch of textured paint to make it lumpy. You can see it drying out here. Then I'll need to paint a bunch of browns on it for gross effect.